More Lessons in Grieving as Taught by Dennis Creev
by Ayaia of the Moon
Summary: Companion Piece to 'Life Lessons as Taught by Luna Lovegood.' Sort of. Has the same feel, anyway, but both do stand on their own, you don't have to have perfect knowledge of one to understand the other. Dennis and George interactions after the war.Oneshot


More Lessons in Grieving as Taught by Dennis Creevy

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It was a beautiful memorial. There were names and inscriptions in minute writing all down the faces of each polished stone, much like the old muggle war memorials, Hermione had said. Charity Burbage was the first name his own eyes were drawn to. He had never taken Muggle Studies himself. The muggle tricks he learned were mainly trial and error or just luck. He could pick locks, he could keep track of muggle money better than his dad, and driving the old Ford Anglia to the village every once in a while…

He shook his head, distancing himself from the name, glancing at the names further down. George Weasley grinned as he found another familiar name. _Remus and Nymphadora "Tonks" Lupin_, the inscription read, _Killed in action in the Battle at Hogwarts_. And, a bit further, _Alastor Moody: killed by Voldemort himself in flight from Little Whinging, protecting Harry Potter_.

Harry was a few steps down, wordlessly gazing at the inscription for Snape. Curious, George came closer to it; he hadn't yet seen what Snape's inscription said. He thought Harry might have had a hand in writing some of these, since Voldemort's name was actually used, instead of 'You-Know-Who' or 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.'

_Severus Snape: killed on orders of Voldemort while in service of the late Albus Dumbledore_. George grinned at that. It was a wrench, really, after hating the man all his life to find out that he'd really been all right after all, but there it was in plain writing: 'In service of the late Albus Dumbledore.'

"'Lo, George," Harry muttered, not looking at him, but staring quite fixedly at the inscription.

"You all right, Harry? Have you seen Moody's name yet?"

Harry nodded. "Visited Lavender as well. You know, Lavender Brown?"

George thought for a moment. "Oh!" he said, realization dawning. "Lav-Lav? The girlfriend?"

Harry nodded again. "She's in St. Mungo's. Nothing serious; they're just checking her over – but she sent Parvati up to get Lockhart's autograph." Harry grinned then, and finally looked at him. "She wasn't bitten. Isn't that great?"

George faintly recalled something of the like. He nearly made a crack about her maybe having a liking for rare steaks now…but he couldn't bring himself to deliver the joke, though he knew Harry would laugh.

"I think Bill's looking for you, by the way," Harry said, as George said nothing about Lavender Brown. "He's down by…by your mum."

George knew what Harry had nearly said. '_He's down by Fred's name_.' The name that George had been avoiding for the hour or so that he'd been here. George nodded politely, but muttered a hurried excuse of needing to use the loo, turning and walking determinedly away from the memorial. He needed air. Needed to get away. Take a walk. Find Luna and ask more about some imaginary fanged creature or other.

It had been said that denial was first in a series of stages concerning grief. George considered this during his flight out of the building, deciding it was stupid. It wasn't that he was denying his brother's death; he was simply choosing to not face it until he was more ready.

In his distraction, George bowled over a small boy a few steps outside the door. He muttered an apology, pulling the boy to his feet and looking him over. He was scrawny, dressed in muggle clothes, with jeans and trainers instead of the wizard robes that half the gathered group wore.

"'S my fault," the boy was saying breathlessly. "I was standing here, you couldn't see me…I'm sort of small."

"You're all right then?"

"Yeah."

"Right then. Sorry again…"

"Dennis. Dennis Creevy."

"Yeah. Sorry again, Dennis," George muttered, hurrying to pass him up before he asked –

"What was your name again?"

– that.

With a pained grimace that almost passed as a smile, George spun 'round to face the small boy once more. "George Weasley," he answered, clamping his jaws together, but finishing the introduction in his head. _And this is my uglier half, Fred_.

"Oh, you…"

George waited for it; the look of pity that would fill his face as he struggled to end his sentence without mentioning Fred. He'd been getting it from everyone, and it was starting to grate on his last nerve.

"George…you…Ah!" the boy snapped, as if he'd been trying hard to remember and had just thought of it. "Fred's twin."

George didn't say anything. An icy feeling had just filled him. Was this better or worse than the pity-looks? He hadn't yet encountered blatant truth.

"Fred's funeral was the first one I went to," the boy went on conversationally. "Well, after my brother's. 'Course, no one really went to my brother's funeral. Muggle funeral, you know. Harry came though. Colin would've liked that."

The name finally clicked in George's head. He'd passed it while perusing near Charity Burbage's name. _Colin Creevy: presumably killed in action at Battle of Hogwarts._

"Dennis," George said again, affirming the boy's identity. "So you're Dennis Creevy."

"Yeah. It's weird, isn't it?"

George didn't need to ask what he meant. 'Weird' was the apt way to describe the gaping hole left that his brother had once filled, now weighed with death. 'Weird' was the way the world had just kept turning, even though it obviously should have stopped. "Yeah," George muttered. "Weird."

"It's like I'm only part of a person. Because I'm not 'Colin's brother' anymore."

George just nodded. Because he couldn't have described it better himself.

"We had to close the door to his room," Dennis went on. It was like he needed to fill the silence with the absence of George's reply. "My mum says everything reminds her of Colin, and we shut some of his things away until we're ready to cope with them."

"It's kind of different for a twin," George said at length, shrugging and pasting on a wan smile. "I covered all of the mirrors in my flat. Haven't combed my hair properly in a while."

Dennis nodded thoughtfully, but the silence didn't last long. Almost like he'd been bursting to say it from the get-go – and perhaps he _had_ been, George couldn't help but think – a question popped from his lips almost too fast for George to catch what exactly it'd said.

"D'you think it'll get better?"

George thought seriously about that. On a logical level? Of course he knew it would get better. It was all anyone had been saying when they tried to reassure him, and it wasn't like he could spend the rest of his life not looking into the mirror when he brushed his teeth.

_But that's not what Dennis wants to know_, George thought. Because on a logical level, George knew that anything that had been said to him had already been said to Dennis too. And Logically, he knew the same things that George knew. But he was asking, one lost brother to another…Would it get better?

George sighed. "We have to hope for the best," he said honestly, as Dennis stared eagerly up at him. "We can't mourn forever, even though things can't go back to the way they were. But we can mourn until we're ready to stop. And no one can tell us when that us but us."

Dennis nodded again. "Yeah," he said at length, grinning. "Thanks, George." And he turned around to enter the memorial room.

George watched him walk away, and something within him surged with…pride? Whatever it was, George liked it.

"Oi, Dennis! Hold up a bit," he called, doubling back to where Dennis stood, waiting for him, smiling in puzzlement. "I'll show you where Fred's name is," he said, pointing him in the direction of several gathered redheads.

Sometimes, it was true, you had to grieve longer than most. And it was true that Denial was the first stage of Grief. Most people try to comfort you when you're grieving, but without realizing it, they can say all the wrong things. But by simply sharing the sorrow of a fourteen-year-old boy, George Weasley found that it was a little easier to bear than before.

And that made all the difference.

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A U T H O R S N O T E

Woah. Holy Lurker Day made of awesome.

I'm getting so many things done!

I won't get some of these up until tomorrow… : (

But look forward to my continuous updates of gloriousness!

Ayaia


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